This post
is going to be one of my shortest and yet one of the most important ones.
Sometimes it makes sense to look outside of the ABR and even outside of the domain
of "therapies" to re-learn and internalize the most essential lessons.

US Open 2013
tennis championship ended last Monday and was won by Rafael Nadal – the
hardest working man in pro tennis.

I am not a
real tennis aficionado but I am fascinated by it as the most vivid and obvious
display of the human work ethics. Sure, all
high level sports are about the work ethics too – but In many other sports
there is either too much of the background grinding and sweat with too many
tiny details that are not visible to the untrained eye.

For me
tennis exposes the qualities of consistency and work ethics in the most elegant
and easy-to-observe form. The rallies are visible and the points accumulate in
clusters (games & sets) that are grouped in such a way that reward the
effort over the sporadic flashes of brilliance
and lucky shots. What I find fascinating is exactly this duality – on the one hand, the game of
tennis looks "light" – like "one doesn't have to" keep the intense
work rate all the time; but on the other hand – it is the consistency and
tenacity that defines the winning ways rather than a pure talent & skill…

That was a
pre-amble – but my message itself today is very brief. A couple of days ago I
picked up a newspaper in the plane where the sports section reported about
Nadal's US Open triumph and these are the quotes I really want to share with:

"[Nadal]
plays by his own confession, not just to win titles but for the puritanical
pleasure of working for each and every point " It is a process
rather than a destination for Nadal.
"I am a positive player, not a negative player" Nadal said.

We all have
heard this "journey above destination" cliché so many times that it
lost its meaning. Intellectually everyone knows that – but especially when it
comes to the home therapy for your child affected by Cerebral Palsy – it is extremely
difficult to really deeply and meaningfully embrace this principle.

However, cliché
or not – that's exactly the truth. You
need to find your pleasure and passion
in doing ABR – not in waiting for
the daily session to be over and not in building the expectations on what the
next assessment is going to show as the overall progress of your child.

So every
time I see an opportunity to help you in internalizing this truth – I try my
best to share it: " thepuritanical
pleasure of working for each and every point "

I just want
you to pause a bit and feel the wisdom behind this statement: it is not about "doing
it well" – it is about LIVING it.

That's the
key to success in any marathon journey – live it, don't just "do it"…
And then the titles will come – a bit sooner or a bit later – but they surely
will…

Well,
that's very much it:

Live your
ABR sessions – don't just 'do', or 'deliver' them. Try to find this winning
attitude inside: the puritanical pleasure of working for each and every point "

Repeating
those questions at my last post brought quite a bit of new responses – so I will
continue to repost them… and please, some of you have only left the requests
here in the blog comments or even in the Facebook ones – please, copy your
requests to <stresstransfer2012@gmail.com>

Question 1.

Over the recent years I have accumulated a lot of videos
teaching the techniques and going into the specific details and nuances of
positioning, setups, technical refinements etc.

We've been using those for the internal training of ABR team
but the constraints of the ABR training sessions that we have today only allow
to share a fraction of those with you during the trainings at the ABR Centers
and Satellites.

However, at the same time – I often here the remarks both
from many parents and from the Trainers giving feedback after the sessions –
that "parents are 'at full learning capacity' with the technical training
that we already give" assuming that
any further dive into the details is going to be an overload and overwhelm.

I believe that this is true for some parents but I hope that
some of you do have some ''spare learning capacity'.

Such trainings will need to undergo some editing and setting
up a membership site for accessing these video – so it is quite a lot of extra
work & expense on our part. So I'd want to hear what's the level of
interest towards it among the active ABR families.

Question 2.

Whilst my own style of training is very technical and detail
oriented – after working closely with Alex for the last year – I can see that
his training brings an entirely different perspective and dimension that I find
very valuable:

His largest focus is on your 'inner game' – on your ABR Mindset and on the
Philosophy of expressing your relationship and deep personal connection with
your child via your exercise. One of his favorite sayings is: "You have to
make your ABR ball ALIVE… With every 'roll' you want to bring some extra life
into your child's body through this ball – can you achieve that if your ball is
dead in your hands?"..

Again, I am unlikely to come up with this perspective myself
because my entire language and the worldview is shaped differently but I am fully behind it and I think that
there is a tremendous value to it for those who are ready to hear the deeper
meaning…

So my question is quite straightforward – if I see enough
enthusiasm from you – we'll then try to make these trainings available during
the coming year, either via the membership site or some other video sharing
form.

I am asking these
questions for a very simple reason – we have plenty more to give but I want to
see the volunteers who'd deliberately step up and say: "Yes, I am ready to
do this extra learning work."

These levels of trainings is not something that I am going
to simply dump on YouTube or Vimeo for the curiosity of the passing strangers..

You are welcome to leave you responses in the comments here
but otherwise please write to me <stresstransfer2012@gmail.com>

Comments

A puritanical pleasure of working for each and every point

This post
is going to be one of my shortest and yet one of the most important ones.
Sometimes it makes sense to look outside of the ABR and even outside of the domain
of "therapies" to re-learn and internalize the most essential lessons.

US Open 2013
tennis championship ended last Monday and was won by Rafael Nadal – the
hardest working man in pro tennis.

I am not a
real tennis aficionado but I am fascinated by it as the most vivid and obvious
display of the human work ethics. Sure, all
high level sports are about the work ethics too – but In many other sports
there is either too much of the background grinding and sweat with too many
tiny details that are not visible to the untrained eye.

For me
tennis exposes the qualities of consistency and work ethics in the most elegant
and easy-to-observe form. The rallies are visible and the points accumulate in
clusters (games & sets) that are grouped in such a way that reward the
effort over the sporadic flashes of brilliance
and lucky shots. What I find fascinating is exactly this duality – on the one hand, the game of
tennis looks "light" – like "one doesn't have to" keep the intense
work rate all the time; but on the other hand – it is the consistency and
tenacity that defines the winning ways rather than a pure talent & skill…

That was a
pre-amble – but my message itself today is very brief. A couple of days ago I
picked up a newspaper in the plane where the sports section reported about
Nadal's US Open triumph and these are the quotes I really want to share with:

"[Nadal]
plays by his own confession, not just to win titles but for the puritanical
pleasure of working for each and every point " It is a process
rather than a destination for Nadal.
"I am a positive player, not a negative player" Nadal said.